Blue
by AlienZombies
Summary: Ellis refuses to leave Savannah until he has collected his best friend Keith. COMPLETE
1. Keith

My first chaptered fanfiction for Left 4 Dead 2... It will be four chapters long. I don't know what else to say about it.

**Blue**

Alarm bells first really started going off for Nick when the smoke started to fill the elevator.

"Shit," he muttered, fighting back a coughing fit. "This place is going the fuck up!"

"I heard you're supposed to stay close to the ground when there's a fire, because there's more air," the woman in the pink T-shirt said – Rochelle, she had said, her name was Rochelle.

"That don't make no goddamn sense to me," said the one in the overalls. He put his hands on his sloping hips. "Every time I can think of, air is usually up."

"Not in the case of fire," Nick snapped. "Christ, let's not be a dumbass so early in the game. I say everyone keep low and run."

"What about the zombies?" Overalls asked.

"What, you can't run and shoot at the same time?"

"Shit," the smaller man muttered, and had the presence to look bashful. "I guess you're right."

Something in the elevator made a loud clunking noise. Rochelle gasped and gripped the railing. "Aww shit," Coach kept muttering. "Aww shit, aww shit."

They reached the ground floor. The doors screamed and ground in their sockets but would not open. Nick's vision was starting to spot a little bit, and each time he breathed, his lungs burned and ached with the need to cough.

"I got it," Overalls shouted, and moved to pry the doors apart.

The minutes following were nothing but a blaze of heat.

--

In the saferoom, Rochelle put her face in her hands and cried.

"Jesus Christ," Overalls said, leaning against the wall and looking down at his trembling hands. "I killed some sonsabitches. I killed folks."

"Those weren't people," Nick growled, sitting down on the floor. His head throbbed. "I don't know what the fuck that was… but those weren't people."

"Wasn't they? I don't know…"

There was food all over – half-eaten boxes scattered around, some flat soda, some room-temperature water. No one in the room was particularly hungry yet, though Overalls and Coach sat down and finished off what was left of a box of Cocoa Puffs. If Nick had known how long it would be before his next solid meal, he would have thought twice about snubbing the M&Ms Overalls offered him.

"What's your name, anyway?" Nick asked as they started up to move on.

Overalls glanced up from where he was shoving shotgun pellets in his pockets. His eyes were bright and warm, and they seemed to smile often. "Shit, did I forget to introduce myself? I'm Ellis. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Nick snatched a bottle of Tylenol off of the counter. It might do them good.

Rochelle was back from vomiting in the bathroom. Her skin was ashen. "God _damn_," she muttered, rubbing her forehead. "I can't believe I got stuck in _Savannah Georgia_ in the middle of the effing apocalypse. This is great. Wonderful."

"Hey!" Ellis cried. "Don't you be slanderin' Savannah! It's the best town there ever was!"

"You a local?" Nick asked. He couldn't stop himself being curious.

"Hell yes. Born and raised."

"That explains some things."

"Like what?"

Nick raised an innocent eyebrow. "Nothin', country boy."

"Ain't no country boy." But Ellis shut his mouth. He rested the barrel of his shotgun on his shoulder. He had brought it with him – or, at least, he had had it when they met on the rooftop. He seemed like the sort of Southern boy who would have a gun or two just lying around for the hell of it.

Coach, steadily removing the barricade from their exit, asked over his shoulder, "What's the plan?"

"There's an evacuation center set up in the mall, I heard," Rochelle chimed in. "Headed under CEDA. I bet we could get there."

"That's clear across town," Ellis commented. "Considerin' how many of them bloodsuckers we had to mow through just to get here…"

"We'll be fine," Coach said sternly. He turned off the safety on his own shotgun. "God's lookin' over us, boy."

Ellis bit his lip, and Nick picked up that something wasn't right – like the guy was conflicted over something. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. "If it ain't too much trouble for you folks, I'd like it if we got to stop by the hospital first."

"Why? Where's the hospital at?"

"It's North about two miles. It's not far off-course from the mall, I promise. It'll cut into our time about an hour and a half, I reckon, if we're goin' by foot… I promise."

"What are we going to the goddamn hospital for?" Nick demanded. He was itching to get a move on. The longer they stayed, the less likely it was that rescue would still be there. "Isn't that like, ground zero for this shit?"

"Don't I know that?" Ellis answered sharply. "Please, we've got to go. My friend is there."

"Don't tell me he got the Green Flu," Rochelle said, sounding exasperated.

"No! Naw, I swear. Healthy as a horse. Ain't had the sniffles since high school." Ellis whipped off his cap and ran a hand through his hair anxiously. "He was tryin' to deep fry a turkey for Thanksgivin', and he got burned all to shit, but we can't just leave him there…"

"Are you serious? We can't afford to go on some insane rescue mission, okay?" Nick was at his wit's end. He looked down as he stubbed out the cigarette he hadn't realized he was smoking, and he saw that there was blood splashed across his shoes. "He's probably dead. _We're_ almost dead."

"You can't say that!" Ellis shouted, and his eyes were just a little bit bloodshot. He donned his cap again but he kept fiddling with it, a nervous habit, probably. "Oh, God, please – please, we gotta go to the hospital. We gotta go get him. I _promised_ him."

"We can't. We're going to the evac. He'll have to fend for himself."

"God dammit! If you ain't gonna come with me, I'll just go myself!"

The threat left the air with a kind of acidic, metal taste in it. It was if all of the oxygen had been sucked out of it. Nobody wanted to be separated, even though they didn't know each other. They were dependent upon each other, and afraid of what might meet them if they separated.

The silence stretched on, pulling the very fabric of the room taut until it seems began to whisper and tear. Rochelle ducked her head and nervously played with her pistol. For some reason, Ellis's hot, piercing gaze was fixed on Nick alone – and Nick couldn't breathe, as if that vortex of powerful heat was pulling him into space.

"Coach," Nick said, and was surprised by the coldness of the air when he breathed in at last, "what do you say?"

Coach pressed a thumb to his temple tiredly. "If we're gonna be haulin' ass across town anyway, I don't see why not."

"It'll be dangerous."

"I don't mind," Rochelle whispered. "Hell, might as well."

Ellis's stare was fixed on Nick, boring down into his soul. "Please?" he asked. "I don't mean to be a bother."

"You _are_ a bother," Nick muttered. "But fine, fine. I don't care. Let's go get your fucking friend."

Ellis let out a low, shaking sigh of relief, and he smiled. The hard anger evaporated instantaneously. "Thank you, man. Thank you. You won't regret it, I promise. Keith's better with a gun than anyone."

"Let's not talk. Let's just go." Nick reached for the door and pushed it open.

The sky was cheery and blue.

--

"Hey, my truck!" Ellis twittered as they passed a twisted hunk of smoldering metal in the road.

"That's a truck?" Rochelle said incredulously.

The whole thing was bloodsoaked. The windshield was buckled inward in a few places; the rest of the windows were shattered.

"Aw, well… Me and Jeremiah was plannin' on just skippin' out on the evac, and pickin' up Keith and goin' on out to, I dunno… Disneyland, up in California. What cause we heard that it's a good place to hole up. Plus, it'd be fun to go visit the West coast, we figured – I ain't never been, though Keith says he has once. As for the truck… We built that sucker to be zombie-proof, but… I guess it waren't, so much."

They stopped as a zombie wandered out of a nearby bar. Coach shot it, and when he reloaded his hands were trembling.

Ellis kept talking. "We loaded that truck up with everythin' we'd need for a long time, but I guess it's all burned up, now. Must've been the gas tanks. Jeremiah said it mighta been a better plan to stick 'em somewhere else, but I figured… Maybe I shoulda listened."

"Jeremiah?" Nick looked over the carnage with mounting disconcertion.

"Yeah. Well… When we hit that lady, he ran right out and I guess… somethin' got him. I didn't stop to look, you know. I heard him screamin' good… and then he stopped."

Everyone looked at him. His brown eyes were surprisingly clear, but his face was blank. He cradled his shotgun in his arms, almost like a baby.

"Anyway," Ellis continued, his voice softer now, "I guess we should keep walkin'."

They walked. Nick felt more than a little ill.

A helicopter rolled across the sky in the distance. This still filled their hearts with hope.

--

Then they approached the hospital, Ellis broke into a sprint. Rochelle yelled and started after him, and then changed her mind, seeing the crumpled figure on the front steps; the bloodspattered walls; the line of bodies leading from the parking lot.

Ellis was shouting, "Keith!" over and over again, his voice warbling as his feet hit the pavement.

The figure on the steps didn't move. Blood, almost black, ran down the steps in rivers.

"Oh, no," Coach said softly. "It isn't, do you think?"

But it was. Ellis was making a beeline for that solitary body, somehow isolated from the others, in a puddle of death.

Nick saw it happen from a distance. The slumped, blood-reddened body on the steps sat up and dragged a hand over its eyes. When the hand came away, Nick saw his face – though from a distance, the details were fuzzed. He could hear Ellis whooping and crying, and the man on the steps laughing and saying, "I'll be damned, I'll be damned."

Ellis dropped his gun. They hugged each other; Ellis took the stranger's face in his hands and pressed their foreheads together with a force that probably hurt them both, but they were both laughing.

"Shit!" Ellis exploded. "You scared me to death!"

Nick led their procession close to the hospital entrance, keeping an eye out for any other motion, for any zombies – but the parking lot was picked clean. The stranger Keith came into focus, his bright blue eyes, as shiny and pleased as Ellis's – his broad, smiling mouth – his sharp, masculine jaw. He spotted the others and waved at them, and Nick didn't wave back.

"Golly! You brought us a goddamn shitload of friends, didn't you, El?"

Ellis beamed. "Sure did. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be here to get you."

"All the way over here for me? Here I thought I was gonna do this all my damn self."

"Yeah. I couldn't well leave you. I had to fight tooth and nail, too."

Keith smiled at him lovingly. "Well, ain't you just my sweet little darlin'."

Ellis's ears turned a shade pinker. "Where'd you get your clothes from? Shit, how'd you get out alive? No, I don't wanna know – come on, there's an evac center up in the mall. Come with us."

"Evacuate?" Keith echoed, his eyes wide. "Shit, you mean like… Get out of Savannah?"

"Yeah, man. Looks like the only good place left here in the South is New Orleans."

Keith was stunned. "No shit."

"No shit, man. You shoulda seen all the folks we had to get through to find you…"

"I'm real grateful, El… I mean, I seen 'em, those things, they ain't real folks at all… But…" Keith looked between them all in surprise, his eyebrows shooting up. "Leave, for good?"

"Probably not for good, naw," Ellis said, though now he seemed uncertain himself. "Just until the infection clears up, I think." He tugged on Keith's sleeve, and obediently Keith stood with him.

"Well, shit, I guess we got to go, don't we? After y'all took the time to come." Keith flashed a smile at them. He was leaner than Ellis, taller and more waif. Something was immediately effeminate about him, but Nick couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Standing together, they looked like bookends. Wonderful. Great.

"Are we done with this cute little reunion?" Nick complained, and Ellis smiled sheepishly. "Great. Can we get back on the road?"

"Sounds like a fine plan," Ellis said, picking up his shotgun again. "Thanks for lettin' me do this. I can't imagine what'd happen if we left Keith behind."

"Wouldn't want to argue with the man, what with him wearin' a suit and all." Keith bent and picked something up. It was an AK-47.

"Where the hell did you get that?" Ellis gasped, marveling over it.

"Some zombie guy had it. He was wearin' a suit and everythin'. Anyway, I killed _him_ with a tire iron. I been havin' a breeze with this here sweet thing… Nearly out of ammo, though."

Ellis whistled in appreciation.

Nick rolled his eyes and kept walking.

"He always that grouchy?" Keith asked Ellis as they brought up the rear.

"Seems like, though I don't know him much," Ellis answered, whispering in an apparent attempt to be discreet.

After that, the conversation dropped off altogether. They had a long, long march ahead of them.

-- **to be continued**


	2. Contact

**Blue**

They stopped for a breather in the gun store. They couldn't keep moving on, anyway – not with the barricade blocking their path. Ellis and Keith slumped together in the corner, whispering to each other and smiling private, tired smiles. They were like twins, energetic and grinning, equally playful and withdrawn in turns. Sitting together, they looked to be a matching set, a pair of salt and pepper shakers on a kitchen shelf.

Nick hung out near them, mostly so that he wouldn't have to listen to Rochelle and Whitaker have a conversation about snack foods. He wanted cola, or something. Even hearing Ellis blather on about gators was better than_ that_.

"I was worried sick," Ellis murmured as Keith slumped against his shoulder. Ellis stroked that scruffy hair with affection. Nick hadn't noticed before, but Keith had bandages all up his right arm, and a large patch over his ear - from his burns, probably, according to them both.

"You ain't never got to worry 'bout me, ain't I told you?" Keith said to Ellis, fiddling with a bit of string hanging from the hem of his T-shirt. "I'll make it through anythin' all right."

"Anythin'. Yeah, yeah you can." Ellis sighed. "It's hard keepin' bright without you."

"Didn't I tell you to always keep on smilin'? It's a damn shame when you don't, darlin'."

Silence fell. Nick glanced at them, and they seemed to be having a battle with their eyes; and from the hurt expression on Keith's face, he was probably losing.

"Shit," he muttered at last, leaning away now. "Didn't know you was so goddamn private."

"I ain't as brave as you."

"You're the bravest sonofabitch I know."

"Quit, Keith. Just quit."

To Nick's surprise, Keith leaned in and nuzzled at Ellis's neck as if in apology, and Ellis ducked his head, his ears turning pink. He kept his hands in his lap. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter and less firm - an obligatory protest. "Keith, you quit…"

Keith caught Nick staring. He frowned at him. "What do _you_ want, yank?"

"Nothing," Nick snapped, "_redneck_."

He stood outside to have a smoke. He could feel Ellis's curious eyes on him, but ignored him. Once they got out of here, he would never see him again, anyway.

It was a little weird, he thought. Especially for Georgia. But he wasn't one to judge the moral behaviors of others – because, after all, he did have a good sense of irony.

--

The car farted and purred up the road in turns. They hit a chipmunk once, and Keith and Ellis whooped and hollered for a good ten minutes about it.

"Did you see that fucker?"

"Flatter'n a pancake!"

"Shee-iit!"

After that, though, the ride was relatively quiet. Ellis had to avoid a parked car every once and a while, and once he rolled over a small pile of bodies.

Keith was sitting next to Nick, sandwiched between him and Rochelle, and kept looking at him as if he had heard him make a strange noise. His eyes were pale craters in his pallid face.

"What?" Nick muttered, not in the mood. He had never liked awkward family car rides.

"Nothin'." A pause. Keith sucked on the inside of his cheek, a nervous habit that drove Nick apeshit with annoyance. "You're just an ornery sort of guy, ain't you?"

"I'm only ornery towards fucking morons and inbred rednecks. Take your pick."

"Now see? Why you gotta be like that for? Ellis says you're a nice guy, but I don't see it."

"Ellis is nice about everybody," Nick said. "My _ex-wife_ could probably even get on his good side."

"Oh, I see. All tough 'bout a divorce, is that it?"

He pronounced it _dee-_vorce. Oh, God, were they ever in the South.

"That was like, ten years ago," Nick said coldly.

"So at the time, I was like, what? Thirteen? Old man?"

Nick smacked him, and was about to lunge in for more when Coach reached back and restrained him.

"Hey, hey, hey! We ain't got time for this bullshit."

Nick settled down, but his blood burned.

Keith smirked around his bloody mouth. He was probably just picking a fight because he was bored – he seemed like the kind of guy who would. Nick darkly, sincerely hoped he wasn't immune after all, and then felt bad for thinking it.

That was when the car began to roll to a stop. Parked cars stretched towards the horizon like a thousand dead bodies.

--

The night was thick and full of a quiet whispering. Nick leaned up hard against the saferoom wall and closed his eyes, trying to draw on the last of his strength.

"Fuck, this hurts," he whispered.

"Come here," Ellis said quietly, smiling. He emerged like an angel from the darkness. "Let me fix you."

"Thanks, man," Nick ground out, laying out on the table Ellis motioned towards.

Without preamble, Ellis shucked off Nick's jacket and hissed at the bloody stain still spreading on the shirt.

"Aww, yep, I see where that sucker got you… Hot damn! That don't look like no good." Ellis's gentle fingers pulled open Nick's shirt, brushed over the burning wound. "You gotta be more careful, man. What was you doin' gettin' yourself pounced on, anyways?"

"It wasn't as if I meant to, asshole, in case you didn't notice... Ouch!_ Shit_…"

"Hang on, man, it's only a cut, looks like…"

"Hurts to even breathe…"

"Yep. Looks like it would. You know, one time, Keith here tried to climb the chainlink fence goin' round the school – didn't you, Keith?"

Keith was lingering in the corner, hands in his pockets. "Ayup."

"Got his foot all tangled up and fell straight on a… well, shit, I ain't entirely sure what it was, but anyway it was pointy. Same sort of cut, here, 'cept his got all infected and nasty, what cause it was all rusted…"

"Lockjaw and everythin'!" Keith exclaimed. "Nearly died."

"Nearly died," Ellis repeated, grinning. He shook his head. "Lordy, did you ever see such a madman."

"Maybe we can focus on fixing me up?" Nick whispered uncertainly.

"Right, right." Ellis went to work. He hummed as he stitched Nick up, after giving him some Ritalin they had found and something else, something stronger. Nick was utterly complacent, his vision fuzzy and full of bright bursts of color. In retrospect, it probably wasn't wise to be medicating him with unknown substances, but it wasn't as if they had time to be checking for things like that.

"How're you holdin'?" Ellis would ask every once and a while, and Nick would smile.

"Better. You do good, Overalls."

"What are you so mean to Keith for?"

Thoughts pattered across Nick's mind. He chased them and found only more dark, confusing spaces. "Don't know, man. Don't know."

"You shouldn't snap so much. He likes you."

"Uh huh…"

After that, everything was blessedly fuzzy. When Nick woke, he was fixed and clothed again. His stomach roared with hunger, but there was nothing to eat. Nothing.

--

Ellis, Coach, and Keith started up a round of singing about ten miles outside of Whispering Oaks.

"Every lady's crazy when her daddy's not around," one of them would say, and then, unable to remember the rest of the lyrics, they would reduce themselves to humming and making guitar whaling sound effects for the next few minutes. Of course they were all huge fans of The Midnight Riders, and their passion had only been ignited through struggling to survive through one of their fiery concerts.

"We're the only sane ones left, Ro," Nick whispered, which made Rochelle laugh.

Ellis stuck out his tongue and Keith laughed. Coach had the presence to shut up.

"God, folks, I'm not feeling so good," the pilot muttered. "It's a long way to New Orleans… long way..."

"Will we have to touch down?" Nick asked, waking up.

"No, don't think so… No, I have plenty of gas. Is it cold in here?"

"Naw," Keith said. "It's nice out. Innit, Ellis?"

"Sure is. This is fishin' weather."

The pilot shook his head slowly. "I'm cold."

This made Nick distinctly uncomfortable. He glanced at the others, but they didn't seem to think this was at all odd. "Where are we at, sir?" he asked, handling his shotgun uneasily.

"Crossing over into Alabama in about ten minutes," the pilot said in a glassed, rhythmic sort of way. His voice gurgled a little bit in his throat.

Coach caught on. His eyes flicked up towards the cockpit and back towards Nick, and his eyebrows hit the ceiling. "You're fucking kidding me," he hissed. "Really?"

"I don't know," Nick murmured back, feeling more nervous by the second. They were too high above ground and none of them knew how to fly a helicopter. If the pilot really was about to conk out and say sayonara to the world… they were all fucked.

"Christ, I'm cold," the pilot muttered. He coughed wetly and moaned. "Sorry, folks, I… I've got a bit of a headache, I…"

The helicopter banked hard left, and Rochelle screamed. Ellis slipped out of his seat, but Keith caught him.

The pilot was hacking and coughing, growling low in his throat. "Oh, God, oh, God," he kept muttering, and gagging. "Gotta land this bird, gotta land her…"

"What in the name of baby Jesus is goin' on?" Keith demanded.

The helicopter dipped unsteadily from the sky. Rochelle was praying in a high-pitched whisper, gripping her seatbelt. The helicopter dropped in sharp increments, jerking them, making Ellis yelp in alarm.

The pilot leaned to the side and vomited all over the floor. It stank of blood and infection.

"Oh, sick!" Keith exclaimed. "Augh!"

Closer to the ground now, closer. "Oh, God," the pilot moaned, but it was a gibbering, gravelly sound now – not anywhere close to human.

"What are we going to do?" Rochelle cried.

Nick cocked the shotgun and aimed.

"No!" Ellis shouted. "You can't!"

"He's changing. You can see it. You see it, right?"

The pilot turned and looked back at them. One eye was gunked with blood, and the other was turning oddly opaque. His chin was smeared with blood. They had noticed it earlier, the coughing - but it hadn't occured to them, not yet, not in the hazy current of euphoria and relief. That tender façade was shattered now, as blood oozed out the pilot's ear.

"Sorry, guys," he said, his jaw grinding. Blood and spit flew from his mouth. "Sorry, I'm trying to land this bird, really, trying –" A sudden snarling bark that made Nick jerk in his seat, a familiar primal sound. "My head! OH GOD! So cold…"

Nick leveled his shotgun. Ellis lunged for him.

"Don't shoot him! Can't you hear him talkin'? Did y'all take leave of your senses?"

"Look at him, Ellis! Fuck!" Nick wrenched his arm free. "Sit back!"

"You can't just shoot him!"

The pilot moved to stand. The helicopter began to slither asswards towards the earth. The pilot opened his mouth and blood poured out in a watery kind of vomit. He groaned, and whispered, "God," and then he began to growl, just low and constant. He held his head in his hands.

"_No_!"

Nick pulled the trigger. He tasted metal. Blood spattered him in the eyes, the pilot was so near. Probably he had brains all over him.

Rochelle screamed and screamed. The helicopter started to spiral downwards, and the earth roared up to receive it, engulfing it in its solid, deadly breast.

When they hit, Nick's vision went black, and there was nothingness.

--

He came to on the hard ground. Rochelle's head was bandaged, but otherwise everyone looked all right.

"Oh," Nick moaned, and struggled to get up. He could only kneel. "Fuck."

"Come here," Keith muttered begrudgingly, and heaved him to his feet. "You okay?"

"Been better," Nick cracked, and offered a grateful smile that Keith didn't return.

"You gonna be able to walk and shoot?"

"Sure."

"Gonna be able to keep up?"

"I'll try." Nick's entire body ached. He pawed around for the Tylenol and swallowed four in a row, dry. He had no water to drink it with. It made him immediately sick and filled his mouth a cottony, bitter taste, but it was better than the pain. "Where did we land?"

Keith shrugged. "Hell if I know. Pilot didn't have a chance to say."

Coach spoke up. "From the looks of it, we're in the swamp. There's gotta be rescue somewhere – I heard they was evacuating the swamp folks just a while ago."

"You figure?" Nick asked. His center of balance felt strangely off-kilter.

"You got any better options?" Keith said defiantly. His nose was bleeding and his face was streaked with gore that was clearly not his own.

Nick laughed, which hurt more than he thought it would. "Nope."

"Good, then." Keith stooped to pick up his trusty baseball bat. His stolen AK-47 had crapped out a long time ago. "Let's get moving."

They started off into the swamp. Nick passed by Ellis, who looked at him with big brown eyes. They were dark and betrayed. They accused him of murder.

Nick snarled and kept walking.

-- **to be continued**

Odds are the next update won't be coming as soon as this one did. Sorry. :(

... Um. Not much else to say about it. Keith has his reasons for being obnoxious.


	3. Fall

**Blue**

"Look at all of this shit," Ellis said thoughtfully, looking around the village. "I ain't got a clue how people could bother to live out here."

"Me neither," Keith said. "Golly Jesus."

They squished through the bog. Rochelle kept murmuring nervously to herself. They were all on edge, out here in the open – surrounded by miles of swamp. Someone could get grabbed out here by something, and get lost, and never come back. There were too many dark corners for things to hide.

"This is no good," Nick muttered, and Ellis glanced at him uneasily. "Can't you feel it? No good, no good."

"God, I hope for once you aren't right," Coach said.

Something whispered in the lower scrub, growling. Rochelle whimpered.

"Just a gator," Keith said, though he sounded uncertain. "Just a gator."

Ellis positioned his body squarely alongside Keith's, and for a minute Nick thought he was just trying to take a defensive stance, and then he saw their hands meet and grip tight. They held hands there for just a few seconds before Ellis pulled away again, looking around; he probably thought that nobody had seen.

But Nick had.

He stored the information away.

The growling increased in volume. Rochelle turned and screamed.

From the belly of the swamp came a wave of dying faces. Their shrieks were drowned out by the sound of gunfire, the fickle voice of God.

--

The night was thick and humid. They sat on the mud-caked floor of the saferoom, exhausted. Rochelle and Keith fell asleep almost immediately, leaning against each other in the corner, oblivious to each other, dependent upon each other. Rochelle wept in her sleep and Keith pressed his face into her hair and drew her close, deep in his own nightmarish slumber. The others let them sleep, were envious of them. True sleep was difficult to come by in this hell.

Nick couldn't sleep for the life of him. His mind raced that frazzled, threadbare, electrified track of neurotic horror. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the icy stab of guilt, saw the faces of those people crumpling before him.

It would pass. It had passed before.

Soon enough, Coach found a corner to sleep in. His soft snoring helped slow Nick's racing thoughts, soothed his stinging nerves.

"You look tense," Ellis said. "Like you done stepped on a live wire, or somethin'."

"Can't stand sitting still," Nick muttered. He kept his voice low, not wanting to wake the others. When it got like this, sleep could be as fragile as eggshells. And once you broke through that shallow barrier, there was no dipping back under.

"What for?" Ellis leaned up against the wall, unrolling a piece of hard candy he had found in a swamp house.

"I don't see _you _sleeping, either, Overalls."

Ellis smiled bashfully; Nick cocked an eyebrow.

"Shit," Ellis said. "All right. I guess you're right."

"Nightmares, right?"

"I guess. I reckon. Yeah, I guess." Ellis sucked on his candy thoughtfully.

Recently, he had been screaming in his sleep, and it was always Keith who brought him to, murmuring gently to him and stroking him, guiding him back from the black, blood depths of those awful dreams. Nick knew the nature of that beast all too well.

"I'm sorry," Ellis whispered. He kept glancing at Keith, asleep in the corner. "Bout everythin'. Sorry."

Something occurred to Nick then, coldly, in the pit of his stomach. "Hey, Overalls… Why were you on the rooftop to begin with?"

"Rooftop where?"

"Back in Savannah. You said you were going to get Keith, but you came to the evac center alone."

Silence fell hard, with the impact of a small bomb. Ellis hitched in a breath and stared straight ahead, as if something in the emptiness before him would provide answers. He fiddled over and over with the candy wrapper, endlessly pulling and twisting and tying, until Nick thought he might go mad watching. Then, very softly, Ellis whispered, "I was a'scared."

"You ran because you turned chicken?"

"I was yellow, all right?" Ellis's voice got dangerously loud, strangled with tears; the others around them did not stir. "Do you know what it's like, to see one of your friends get ripped apart like that? I didn't even know, those things kill folks! I didn't know, not then. _How was I supposed to know they was fuckin' zombies, Nick?_"

"You were going to leave him behind? What, because you saw that Jerry kid get ripped to shreds?"

"Shit! I ain't never seen someone die before that day. 'Cept for my Pa, and that… that was ages ago, ages, it…" Ellis hiccupped, and punched the wall angrily. He only succeeded in ripping up his knuckles and making himself bleed. Scowling darkly, trembling, he sucked at the wounds; he was somewhere else, somewhere haunted.

Nick felt the electricity in the air. He had to do something. "Ellis…"

"Naw," Ellis rasped. "Don't worry 'bout me none. I hate to be a downer like this. Last thing you need."

"I'm sorry. I don't apologize much, but Jesus Christ."

"Don't worry 'bout it, don't worry…"

They lapsed into an uneasy quiet. Coach snored. Outside, they heard the high chirring of the swamp bugs, the sloshy rippling of a gator sinking into the bog, the hiss of a snake. Sometimes, too, they heard a sound in the distance, piercing, high – a scream, a snarling noise, animalistic but far too human for comfort. And, worse than that, nearer, the watery, choked breathing of the Infected, just outside the door. Waiting. The scratch of fingernails against the door.

"Did you know," Ellis whispered almost an hour later, his breath smelling of sugar, "Jeremiah used to draw all the time? He made my shirt."

That shirt, the shirt with the Bullshifters logo on it, stained with the handprints death leaves behind on the living. Blood and things which would never come clean.

"That so?" Nick asked. He felt desperate and wanting, but he wasn't sure for what.

"He made my shirt," Ellis murmured, and said nothing more.

--

At some point, Nick fell asleep on his feet. He didn't remember it. One minute, they were sloshing through knee-high mud and grime, and the next his feet were on dry land, and everyone was sitting and taking a break, eating their pathetic, watersoaked rations of food.

Nick opened his mouth to speak, and instead veered hard to the left and puked into the swamp.

"Nice one," Keith commented when Nick came stumbling back. "Feel better, man? The swamp'll do that to city folks."

"You get used to it," Ellis said, looking up at Nick with a wan smile. He was sitting beside Keith, splitting a sad-looking sandwich. "Do you need somethin' to eat?"

"Couldn't eat if I wanted to," Nick said. His mouth felt stuffed with cotton.

The expression on Ellis's face was one Nick would never forget. It was the look he expected to see on the face of a saint as he forgave a sinner of his sins. His cheeks were smudged with crusted blood.

Nick turned back around and was sick again.

--

Any of Nick's half-formed doubts were banished that night in the saferoom.

He couldn't sleep. He skipped along the surface of his dreams, unable to slip under, kept starting awake in the night feeling pale and weak. Ever since arriving here in the swamps, he'd been endlessly sick, and it was bringing him towards an untimely end. He couldn't eat without bringing it right back up, and this combined with his steady threshold fever was making him dehydrated. Sometimes his ears rang for no particular reason.

At first, when he heard the low growling, the muttering, the rasping breath, he thought it was a zombie outside the door. He pawed around for his machete, so that he could kill it without alerting the others, but when he looked at the door, he could see no moving shadows and – strangely – the sound seemed to be coming from behind him.

Quietly, he rolled over on the grimy blanket he now called a bed and peered into the darkness. It was pitch black, utterly useless, but in the end he didn't need his sight. Ellis's voice cut through the thick silence, despite his obvious attempt at a whisper.

"_Harder_."

It took Nick a moment to comprehend what exactly he was hearing – the muffled rustling, the slide of skin, and worst of all that ragged, needy breathing. He knew the signs all too well.

Keith's voice answered back. It wasn't a surprise to Nick. "Shush up, darlin'…" and his voice was swallowed up by a low, keening moan from Ellis.

"Hurts," Ellis was murmuring. His voice was thick and deep like Nick had never heard it. "Oh, God, hurts good…"

"Shush up, now, you'll wake 'em up…"

After that they were both wordless, just bodies in motion.

Nick lay awake and heard it all against his will, his hands clasped behind his head as a pillow. Ellis, probably – it was probably Ellis – came with an unexpectedly feminine whine. Someone was crying.

Nick waited until they were both asleep again before he stepped outside to vomit. The moon caught in the spaces between the trees and cast shadows like bodies.

--

"I don't like the looks of this," Keith said as they came upon the enormous house. He kept checking behind him, as if to make sure Ellis was still with him. "Too many empty rooms. All sorts of nasty shit could be hidin' in that house."

"Who the fuck builds a mansion in a swamp?" Nick muttered.

"Duh. Plantation owners, you dumb shit."

"Keith, shut the fuck up."

Keith pumped his shotgun, setting his jaw, and started ahead towards the house. Ellis followed, but looked at Nick uneasily, as if apologizing for Keith's behavior – but it wasn't his job to do that. They were all grown men.

Rochelle kept dragging her feet. She was suffering a milder version of what Nick had, though she took to it worse. Instead of insomnia, she was nearly dead on her feet from exhaustion, and her aim was terrible.

"I hear a radio," Ellis was saying up a head. "Can't you hear it? Am I goin' batty?"

"No, I hear it," Nick answered. He stopped and cocked his head. "I think it's in the back."

Keith took off running. His feet stirred up dust. Zombies lunged from bedroom doorways as he passed them, bewildered by the intrusion, and calmly Ellis walked along and killed them one by one. His shoulders were parallel with the earth, tense and straight and strong.

When they reached the back garden, Keith was already at the radio, screaming into it – and death was already coming in a rancid, shrieking wave, a black cloud of thunder rolling in over the wilted flower gardens.

Coach prayed allowed as he sprayed bullets.

--

Nick couldn't remember running so hard in his life. Yes, they had run to grab the gas and get in Jimmy Gibbs Jr.'s car, and yes, they had run to the helicopter to be lifted into supposed safety, and yes they had run from hell and back away from zombies left and right and up and down… but Nick had never, ever quite run like this.

He had a memory like it, when Cookie had caught him slowly burning her underwear a week before the divorce. She had picked up the butcher knife and at the time, something in her face told him she meant to do it. His feet had never hit the pavement faster as he streaked barefoot through the neighborhood, with her hot on his heels, fast in her jogging shoes, fueled by her rage. In retrospect, it had been a relatively funny moment – but at the time, there had been nothing darker and more horrifying to Nick. He had screamed like he never screamed before.

He was screaming now. His feet flew over the uneven wooden dock. Behind him, he was only aware of intense heat, the scratch of fingernails on his shoulder blades, the shriek of the reaper's breath. Rochelle was beside him, tears streaming down her cheeks, and then she stopped dead in her tracks, fell over in a faint. The illness overtook her.

Nick's momentum didn't allow for him to stop. He leapt to the boat and watched the horde descend upon her. He fired his shotgun, but it was a useless endeavor.

Keith and Ellis were bringing up the rear, thinning the crowd with burning bullets. Keith was making some sort of triumphant hollering noise, whooping, blood trickling through his nose.

Ellis came up on Rochelle and scooped her into his arms as if she weighed nothing. He started running; Keith passed him and leapt onto the boat beside Nick, staggering a little on his injured leg, and here came Ellis grinning, knowing he would make it – when it came, the thing from the bushes, snagging him around the leg, the tongue.

Ellis went down, dropping Rochelle, who was jarred awake again and started mechanically pulling herself to her hands and knees as Ellis was dragged backwards, screaming, _screaming_, his nails digging into the dock as it slipped away, ripping up his nails to the bloody quicks. There was a sick crack as his leg disconnected from its socket, and then he vanished into the underbrush.

The moment took all of ten seconds, but it felt so much quicker, as if he had suddenly teleported out of sight. Keith's face blanched and went kind of blurry, as if from a photograph smudged by water. His mouth dropped open and he might have been making sound, but Nick was deaf.

Rochelle tumbled into the water and floated there. As she came downstream, Coach leaned down and grabbed her, pulling her onboard. The deep cut across her stomach bled steadily. She coughed up some water and was out again, into the darker realm of sleep, where only God could promise her return.

The boat was pulling out from the dock; Nick backed up and took a running start, launching himself back onto the dock. For a minute, it felt like his legs would give out, but then they were under him again and he was running in that precarious, speeding way where the center of gravity seems to come up from underneath you and knock you over. He fired blindly into the bushes, even though Ellis's screaming had stopped long ago. The puff of smoke alerted him to his victory, but the united wail of the next flood of Infected reminded him of his risk.

"Come on," he muttered, catching Ellis's arm and yanking him out of the bushes. "Get out of there, Overalls, the fuck are you doing?"

Ellis looked up at him with bleary, unfocused eyes, and smiled. "Nick…"

"Couldn't leave you," Nick muttered, gathering Ellis into his arms; Ellis's eyes slid shut. "What the hell am I thinking? Couldn't leave you behind…"

Without preamble, Nick lifted him and threw him bodily into the river. He didn't look back as he dived in after.

The cold water slipped around him and shut out light and sound and air. It fit him, closed around him like a hand, chilled him through to the bone and sucked out his voice. And after, there was nothingness.

**-- to be continued**

I'm not sure why, but I'm growing increasingly dissatisfied and insecure about my works... Ugh. I'll just post anyway.


	4. Turn

I anticipated that this fic would be four chapters long, but it seems like there needs to be another one... so now it will be five chapters. And that's about it.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

**Blue**

Nick came to about an hour later on the deck of Virgil's boat. He felt waterlogged and sore all over, but otherwise fine. As he sat up to look around, he was swarmed by Coach.

"Shit, boy, you're alive. I was startin' to wonder. You was paler than death."

"Hi, Coach," Nick said, smiling in thanks as he was handed two pills to knock back. There was no water to chase them down with. "How am I looking?"

"Like you damn near drowned. The hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that Ellis was going to die if someone didn't man up and fetch him."

Coach snorted, but he looked pleased. "Since when did _you_ give a damn?"

"I don't know," Nick said, shrugging, even though Coach didn't expect an answer and was already getting back up. "I don't know."

"Come on, boy. Now that you're up let's get some food in you."

"What about Ellis?"

"He's fine," Keith said from his left; Nick jumped, not expecting him to be there, and he nearly struck out from reflex alone. "His leg was all dislocated n' shit, but Coach put him together again all right, what cause he was a gym teacher. And I guess he was smushed up some… but he's all right now, walkin' and talkin' and everythin'."

Nick stared at him, then slowly got to his feet. His clothes were in that state between wetness and dryness, just uncomfortably damp and sticking to his body when he moved.

For a minute, Keith seemed conflicted, coughing nervously into his fist, and then he said quietly, "Thanks, man. You done saved his life."

"Yeah," Nick said, and he couldn't keep back the sneer that broke through. "Where were _you_?"

Keith, stunned, didn't answer. He looked down at his feet as Nick trudged into the cabin to eat.

--

Ellis's limp was quite apparent, and though he was in pain he kept on that cheery smile. He kept thanking Nick until Nick snapped at him, and he shut up. In the end, Nick felt even more like a jackass.

They sat out on the deck and watched the sunlight strike the water, simply basking in their survival. Keith rested his head on Ellis's shoulder, and Ellis bore it with a tired smile. Rochelle, still unconscious, was left inside – her breathing had become dangerously shallow and slow, kind of rattling deep in her lungs. No one was sure what would become of her. She'd been under for almost 24 hours.

"Man oh man, it feels good to be alive," Ellis murmured. "Don't it? It feels nice."

"You're welcome," Nick replied snarkily, and to his surprise this made Ellis smile.

"You pretend like you're a spiky old bastard, but I know somethin' you don't know," he said. "No spiky old bastard woulda done what you did for me."

Nick felt a cold rush through his insides, like water, something akin to humiliation. It sent a spike of fever through his veins. It was a feeling he hadn't experienced in a long time. "Who says I did it for you?" he snapped reflexively, and Ellis's face fell.

Keith wrapped an arm around him, and Ellis resisted for the barest moment before leaning in with a sigh.

Nick turned away to grab a cigarette, but he could feel Keith's blue-eyed stare drilling into the back of his head. Let him look, Nick thought venomously. If he was too weak to fight, let him look.

--

Nick wasn't hungry for dinner, so he didn't go up with the others when Virgil announced that he had some beans ready. When Keith realized that Ellis's leg was troubling him too much to bother to go up, he put up a show about staying, too – but in the end, his stomach won out. It was just as well.

It was quiet down in the cabin. The single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling kept flickering in and out; Ellis would tap it and mutter to himself good-naturedly.

"I ever tell you 'bout the time Keith tried to change a lightbulb in a lightning storm?" he began conversationally; Nick shot him a glare that silenced him. Ellis's eyebrows quirked up in that pitiful way they did when he was trying to win someone over. "Oh. Sorry. Man, you two just do not get along, do you?"

"No," Nick replied coolly.

Ellis ducked his head and shyly picked at a bloodstain on his overalls. The marks around his neck were ugly and purple. After a couple of minutes, he started making a low, snuffling sound, and Nick caved.

"Hey, Overalls," he said gently, and the bald look of hope on Ellis's face made him smile. "How about a game of cards?"

"I don't know much 'bout cards, 'cept for Old Maid, but I guess I can try. I don't mind learnin'."

Nick crossed over to Ellis's bunk and sat down across from him. "Here, let me teach you something."

He started dealing the cards. Ellis watched him with eagerness and solemnity. He drank in the knowledge with surprising speed – despite his goofiness and his cluelessness, he was actually quite bright and intuitive. Nick went soft on him and let him win a couple of hands, and was rewarded by Ellis's enthusiastic reactions. They both started laughing, and the sound seemed so out of place in this world full of darkness and black, swirling pain.

"You're all right," Nick said.

Ellis bit his lip to keep back his laughter, but it didn't help much. He shook his head. "You're an awful good friend, Nick. Shame I didn't meet you earlier."

"I guess so."

Their eyes met. Ellis's laughter faded off easily, until it was only a vague, pleasant glow, like the sun behind a layer of cloud. The light seemed to suck the air from the room, until Nick was drowning. All at once, comprehension dawned in Ellis's face, and his eyes widened, his smile slipping, his lips parting as if to form words. Nick's hands fisted in his lap.

"Wait, now, Nick," Ellis said softly.

But Nick shook his head once, firmly. He got up, collected his cards, and stepped out onto the deck. He needed to breathe. He pawed around for a cigarette and lit it with trembling hands, watched the water roll as if in the throes of an unhappy dream.

Ellis hunched over on the bed and put his face in his hands.

--

Rochelle woke up at last. She had a roaring fever that they soothed with medicine and river water. Aside from a few bruises and scrapes, she was in relatively good shape – it was the illness that had gotten her. Nick was already much better, having puked out the last of it two days previous. She would have to ride it out just the same.

"Horrible dreams," she told them as she sat shaking on the deck. She was thirsty but could not drink. "I had some terrible, awful dreams."

"Poor baby girl," Coach would say, stroking her hair. She reminded him of a niece he had, he once said – but that niece had died in a car accident.

Keith kept his hands in his pockets. He shifted foot to foot and watched the sky. His cheeks seemed flushed, as if with fever.

"You did what you could," Ellis tried to say to him, putting a hand to his cheek; Keith jerked away and shook his head like a spooked animal, eyes pale in the afternoon light.

That night was full of uneasy sleep for everyone.

--

The eruption came about a quarter of the way into New Orleans after a particularly nasty rush of zombies from a nearby apartment building.

"Smoker!" Keith was screaming from the balcony. For a terrible moment, no one could see him, lost in the smog and haze of gunfire. "Smoker's got me!"

They heard it, the audible crunch of his bones as the tongue around his chest squeezed. Nick calmly aimed with his shotgun, blasted the thing off of him, and Keith fell back to earth, crumpling on the sidewalk and working to breathe. He made a high, whistling noise in his throat as Nick approached him and started to pick him up.

"Don't touch me," Keith growled, batting Nick's hand away.

"Okay. Fine." Nick let go and stepped back. Everyone stopped to look at them, sensing the oncoming fight.

Keith labored to his feet, gasping for air; he swayed dangerously and caught himself. "Goddamn Smokers," he wheezed. "My lungs…"

Nick kept his hands off, as ordered. He rolled his eyes.

Keith noticed. "Hey! You quit."

"Quit what? Fuck, am I not even allowed to stand here anymore?"

Keith narrowed his eyes at him in warning. After a few seconds, he seemed to get enough air in his lungs to function again. "I just don't trust you, that's all," he muttered, brushing himself off.

"Yeah?" Nick laughed wryly.

"Yeah," Keith sneered. "You're a slimy sonofabitch and if you ain't tellin' a lie you probably ain't talkin'."

"You? You're the most incredibly worthless piece of shit I've ever met." Nick felt the building momentum, ran with it, even when it began to border on a savage sharpness and caused the others to look amongst themselves warily. Nick kept going, had to keep going. "You're this… this cocky, selfish bastard who can't even look after his own ass-candy without getting him damn near killed. Where were _you_, when he was dying?"

"Oh yeah?" Keith hissed. His eyes glittered with the prospect of a real fight. "You callin' me a faggot, boy?"

"I call 'em like I see 'em."

Keith lunged at him, bloodied his nose. Ellis shouted at them, trying to break their focus, perhaps because he knew he was the only one that could, but it didn't stop the inevitable. Nick got in a few solid punches before Coach got them apart again. Keith spat at Nick's feet to settle the distance between them. The air felt too hot, too heavy, too full of electricity. They were all too aware of the degradation, the way stress and fear could wear down the nerves until there's nothing left. Sometimes relief came in explosive, burning bursts.

"Go on!" Nick goaded, eyes stinging, mouth dry. "Come on and fight, sissy!"

All around them, the shadows pulsed, the shadows leered. They didn't have time, no time at all.

Keith chuckled, wiping some blood from his lip, and just like that the fire went out of him. His shoulders slumped and she pushed a hand through his scruffy hair with weighted movements that spoke of surrender. "You poor, jealous bastard."

Nick was stunned. "What?"

But Keith was walking away. He spat up pink on the cobbled street.

Nick stared down at his dirt-caked palms. His mouth filled with bile as he realized, with creeping finality, exactly what it meant. The others started walking again, more tense than ever. Rochelle's hands shook on her gun, and from the jerking of the barrel it was clear she was at the end of her rope.

Ellis stumbled a little on his injured leg, and Keith caught him, whispered something sweet into his ear – Nick could tell by the way his ears blushed pink.

Lazily, with sleep-like movements, Nick cocked his shotgun and pretended to blow Keith's head away. It filled him with cold satisfaction.

--

Distantly, there was a sound, like the roar of an engine.

"Do you figure that's rescue?" Ellis asked. He knocked aside useless items as he plundered the dresser drawers of an adjacent hotel room. Coach and Keith kept watch in the hallway. Keith kept leaning over to spit on the floor, and his spit was pink, and then red, and then pink again. Something wasn't quite right about it, but Nick couldn't place why.

"I don't know," Rochelle answered Ellis now, cocking her head. "That doesn't sound like a helicopter."

"Jets," Nick supplied. "It sounds like fucking jets."

"Why would they be sending jets down to New Orleans?" Rochelle' eyebrows pitched together. "You don't evacuate people in jets… Do you?"

"No." Nick grinned a hard, bitter grin and sat on the edge of the bed to reload his shotgun. "No, no you don't."

"Got to keep walking," Ellis muttered to himself. He grabbed a bottle of pills out of the drawer and shook it to test its fullness. "Can't stop now. Here, Nick."

"I don't want that shit," Nick said, batting the proffered pills away. "Watch after yourself."

"Got to keep walking," Ellis said again, as if he hadn't heard; he put the pills in his pocket.

The roar increased, like distant steady drums.

--

"I'm fine," Ellis growled, dragging himself back to his feet. Every movement seemed calculated, painful. He had fallen down after being stricken hard by a sideswiping Charger, and there he had laid for the entirety of the fight. "I'm all right, I'm damn near shittin' sunshine, I promise…"

"You're not going anywhere on that leg," Rochelle said to him. Her voice had a pinched quality, probably because she was trying not to vomit. She came up to him and held out a hand, as if he would suddenly accept her help after denying both Keith's and Coach's – but no, he pushed her hand away too with a low, feral kind of noise.

"I'm fine," he insisted. "I got it."

Sure enough, after several agonizing minutes they couldn't afford, he got himself back up. He ground his teeth with audible ferocity, his eyes glittering with unshed tears, but when Keith went to support him he pushed him away, too. "I got it," he said, softer now. "Please, please, I'm fine."

Keith sighed and thrust his hands down in a helpless gesture. "Darlin'…"

Ellis shook his head, leaning hard on his good leg, heaving with the effort it took to breathe. "I'm fine."

"Overalls," Nick snapped, and Ellis looked at him with soft, hurt eyes. They stared each other down, and finally Ellis let out a trembling, tired sigh.

"All right," he said weakly. "All right, I guess. I guess you're right."

"I found a stroller," Rochelle said timidly. "It'll have to do."

Ellis sat down in it, tucking his good leg up to his chin and tucking the other up behind him as best he could; Coach came up behind the stroller and pushed.

As they walked, Keith fixed Nick with a burning glare. He didn't speak. His eyes smoldered through each layer.

"What?" Nick snapped.

"God dammit," Keith muttered. "Why does he go and listen to you?"

Nick was about to answer when they came from the second-story balcony in a black, shrieking wave. As he fell back, blinded by gunfire and fear, he saw the shape of Keith hitting the ground, heard the pitch of his scream just for a moment before it was swallowed in the general din.

They would have to pick him from the bodies. Blood fell like snow, carrying sweetly on the wind.

--

Keith was alive. They pulled him out, coated in blood and the slicker, nastier stuff of the infection. It was impossible to tell his wounds from the general mess, so they took him inside and washed him down with some stagnant water they found in a bathtub on the first level.

That was when they found the bite mark.

"No," Keith rasped as Ellis ran his fingers over it. It was there behind his ear, covered by his hair most of the time. The thing was puffy, almost purple, black around the pockmarks of the teeth, and white inside of that. It was a new wound, but badly infected because of the nature of the virus. It explained his constant fever, the pink spit.

"When did you go and get that?" Coach asked, rummaging around in his first-aid kit. "We're gonna have to drain that thing."

"It won't do any good," Nick said dully, eyes fixed on that ugly, swollen mark. "He's infected."

"Don't you go and say that!" Ellis shouted. His voice pitched up to that spiraling, hysterical level. "Don't you say shit like that, do you hear? Keith's fine! Ain't you, Keith? You're immune. Go on and tell 'em."

"I'm immune," Keith echoed. His eyes were wide and glassed with fear. "Right? I'm immune, right? I've lived two goddamn weeks in this… this fuckin' _nightmare_, I ain't never been bit, I'm immune, right?"

"Don't know," Nick said, as if he was God, as if he could pass down Keith's judgment. "We'll have to see. The minute you start trying to nibble on us, I'm going to bust your skull open. Do you understand?"

"Oh, Lord, please don't shoot me," Keith whispered, and the tears started up for Ellis; he put his fists over his mouth and retched into them. Keith shook his head over and over. "I'm immune, I'm immune, I'm immune."

A steady droning noise built up around them until it was the loud, rumbling shout of a giant – a jet passing overhead. The world around them rattled and shook, and then, for a terrible moment, seemed to still. The concussion came on a brief rush of air, like a breath, and then with an explosive scream that made the walls tremble. Coach stumbled hard against the sink, and dust settled down from the ceiling on their heads.

"_Holy shit_!"

"Bombs," Nick said calmly, looking up. "They're bombing the city."

"No," Ellis croaked. "No, no, no. We ain't come this far to die."

"Got to keep moving," Keith whispered. "Please."

Coach tried to stop him, to bleed the pus out of his wound, but Keith shrieked and pushed him away.

"It don't matter! It don't matter one lick, we got to keep movin', I ain't gonna die here! _I'm immune_!"

Blood sprayed from his mouth. They all saw it.

Swallowing hard, Ellis led the way. He probably started up ahead because he couldn't bear to look any longer. Even though he was slowest, they let him limp up ahead, and when he stumbled, Nick hefted him up onto his back and carried him.

The bombs rained down around them. Keith lagged behind just a little, drooling an incriminating string of red.

-- **to be continued**


	5. Blue

I frankly don't know why I didn't post this. This was finished a very, very long time ago except for one small section. I think it was because there was meant to be a small subplot that I forgot about... Whatever. And then I lost the document in a sea of jump drives. What a mess. Here it is, incomplete. I feel so bad for leaving this hanging for so damn long. D: Please forgive me! I'll just go hang my head in shame.

Here's the final installment.

**Chapter Five**

"Jets," Nick kept muttering. He laughed and shook his head. "Fucking jets."

Rochelle rocked back on her heels with a cry. The gun jerked in her hands as blood and brains plumed brilliantly in the air. Ellis whooped.

"You done good, girl!" he crowed.

Keith turned and coughed into his hand. It was a wet, nasty kind of noise, and when he swiped his hands on his pants, they came back bloodstained.

Ellis saw it. His eyes darkened and he pursed his lips together. "We ought to make it to the evacuation point here today," he said quietly. "We just got another day, right?"

"If we keep walking," Coach assured him. "We've got to keep moving."

"I wouldn't mind stoppin' for lunch," Keith said, his voice grinding in his throat. "My gut, it's killin me, it's…"

"We'll eat somethin'," Ellis promised him instantly. When the others tried to contradict him, he turned on them with a fierceness that spoke of blind panic. "We'll stop and get somethin' to eat! Am I right?"

"Fine," Rochelle whispered. "Fine."

"Much obliged," Keith mumbled. He smiled a nervous smile.

* * *

They sat in the dark corner of a convenience store, hunched defensively in a circle. They ate what they could – old food items, some damp with rain. They ate with animalistic, mechanical movements, shoving food into their mouths without speaking, shoulders tense; those facing the inside of the circle kept turning around to check for incoming infected. Every one of them trembled with exhaustion and hunger.

"Got to piss," Coach muttered after a while, and stumbled into the bathroom.

"Don't fall in," Nick sniped, but Coach ignored him, probably hadn't heard him.

Rochelle hesitated, and then went in after Coach. The illness was giving her a terrible time, and her stomach was tying her in knots.

Ellis made a low, constant noise as he ate, a kind of moaning sound. He shoveled chips into his mouth at a frantic pace as if he couldn't get enough all at once, and any other time, Nick would have made fun of him for it. Now, he reached out to share, and Ellis's arms jerked as if he was going to take it away; his eyes were wild as he searched out Nick's face, and then he relaxed, let go of the bag and let Nick grab a handful.

"I ain't sure how much long I can take it," he said softly. It wasn't right seeing someone so cheery be so worn down. Nick couldn't imagine the turmoil the man must be facing. "God, God, God."

"We're all on the edge, Overalls," Nick said softly.

Keith, sitting beside them, stared blankly into space. His eyebrows pitched up as he slowly chewed the Twinkie he had grabbed. He retched once, and then ran outside to puke. Ellis watched him go, whined in his throat.

Nick looked at him. "He'll be fine," he heard himself saying, even though he didn't believe it. Ellis seemed to need it.

"My Keith," Ellis whispered. "He always used to be so goddamn bright. He always told me to keep on smilin', and now… Now I ain't sure of nothin', I ain't…" He choked, and this seemed to flip a switch in him. He muttered to himself over and over, "He's got to be immune, he's got to be immune…"

Something in Nick was just too tired. He peeled back his upper lip from his teeth in a snarl and said, "You aren't the only one with problems." And the words were black and flushed him with a coldness like fear. He didn't retract them.

Ellis's huge dark eyes stared at him. His mouth worked without sound and then, very softly, he said, "He's got to be immune. I can't lose him."

Then Ellis fractured and split into a thousand pieces, a million pieces. He leaned hard into Nick's shoulder and sobbed, gripping his expensive white suit in those grimy, desperate hands, and Nick didn't mind, held him tighter and tighter as if he could absorb him into his soul.

"Sorry, so sorry," Ellis moaned. His tears were wet and clean. "God, I should of kept a better eye on him, I should have…"

Nick rested his face against the crown of Ellis's head and lapsed into a soothing rocking motion that was almost innate in him. "Shush now, Overalls, kiddo…"

And there, in the private warmth of Nick's arms, Ellis wept. He had fought so hard for this, had scraped tooth and nail for this one truth. The infection was taking everything from him, and Nick understood, understood it on a dark, burning plane that left him feeling bare and young.

"Go ahead and cry," Nick murmured into Ellis's hair. This wasn't his place, to be so gentle – it wasn't who he was. But in a way, Ellis cried for both of them, and Nick needed it, needed it badly.

The room was dark and quiet. Coach came back, took in the sight of them curled on the floor and didn't comment.

Keith stumbled through the doorway, coughing. "Ellis, where you at?"

Ellis swallowed the knot in his throat with an audible click. "I'm here, darlin', I'm here."

"What're you hidin' for?" Keith rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Damn, I can't see worth shit."

Ellis carefully drew himself from Nick's arms. Nick didn't want to let go.

* * *

They had barely started out again before Keith's legs gave out under him and he stumbled hard into the ground, skinning his arms. He seemed not to feel it, kept trying and failing to stand back up. His eyes were wide and a bit of gummy. Bloody stuff was building up in the corners of them. "Ellis," he said, and made a quiet keening sound. "El?"

"I've got you," Ellis said, coming up and giving him a hand up. Keith leaned into his arms with a muffled curse. The others shifted uncomfortably, not appreciating the interruption. They all knew there was nothing to be done, and it was painful to be held back by such a lost cause. What was worse was the blatant suffering on the two boys' faces.

"Look at me, look at me," Keith muttered. "I ain't never… No, God…"

"Shh, now," Ellis murmured to him. "You're all right."

For a minute, Nick saw a window into what they had once been – two healthy young men, quite normal and alive and thriving in a little town called Savannah, Georgia, wandering around by the creek in the summer and sharing beer or sweet tea and tossing rocks and laughing and chasing each other barefoot in the grass, telling each other tall tales or kissing in the privacy of their truck in some deserted back road. Something that had once been a good life, falling apart to the tune of gunfire.

"Darlin'," Keith said with a weak smile, "I'm sorry about this. I know you don't much like it, you know, when…"

"No, it's all right. It's okay. I got worse things to worry about, now…"

"You keep bright, now, you hear?"

"'Course, Keith, of course, of course…" Ellis held Keith's trembling, fevered body to him and petted his hair. His eyes were glassed with that shocked horror Nick had seen on the faces of prisoners of war before, in the news. His nerves were worn away to their bare, rawest parts.

Keith bent over Ellis's arm and vomited thickly onto the street. A low, grinding sound came from him and then shut up.

Ellis made a quiet sobbing sound and stood him back up. "There, now, feel better?"

Nick averted his eyes, shoving his hands in his pockets.

* * *

Another wave of infected, triggered by Coach stumbling into a stack of trash cans and spilling them down the street. Keith stood uselessly to the side, unable to aim anymore with his eyesight nearly gone, and Ellis guarded him with a doggedness that really admirable. It was clear that he would not let his lover go down with a serious fight.

Just as Nick was starting to get into the swing of picking them off at a decent distance, he heard that familiar shriek, and the unexpected pressure of something heavy tightening around his chest. All at once, his feet came out from under him and he was jerked violently onto his back, dragging across the pavement, losing a shoe. The air was crushed out of his lungs before he could work up much more than a shocked cry.

"Nick!" Ellis yelled. "_Shit_!"

Rochelle started towards him but was impeded by a cluster of zombies from the left, who were after Coach. Coach was attempting to reload frantically and dropping ammunition everywhere as a result. Blackness started to eat away at Nick's vision and he heard something in his chest give a warning crack. As he began to think he may pass out, he felt the tension release, and Ellis was there, one hand on his face.

"Talk to me. Hey. Talk to me. Christ."

Breathing was difficult, but Nick worked up a positive hand gesture. He felt the blast of air on his face as Ellis sighed in relief. "Thank _God Almighty_."

"I'm fine," Nick wheezed, getting carefully to his feet. "That was a close call. Thanks, kid."

"That's what friends are for," Ellis murmured, and looked at him – _really _looked at him. Nick's heart continued to ache. And then Ellis smiled, and that hurt even worse.

The horde had thinned out enough for them to continue on by now. Rochelle helped Coach pick up the bullets he had dropped as Keith made some ridiculous attempt at moving forward. As Nick approached, he could hear a weird gurgling noise coming from him, some precursor to a growl – and then Keith pitched forward like he was planning on hitting the dirt once more.

Nick reached out to catch his arm, steadying him, but Keith flailed at him until he let go.

"Quit, you… I'm fine, I'm fine… Listen, I'm… I'm…"

"Let me guess, you're immune." Nick couldn't keep back the cruel sarcasm.

"Shut up, you shut up!" Keith growled. His lips were chapped and split. His blue eyes stared. "You let me alone!"

Nick felt distinctly ill. He kept both hands on his shotgun and kept on walking. Ellis hung close to him by some unspoken agreement.

The bridge was up ahead. Rochelle screamed with triumph.

* * *

"I don't feel good," Keith murmured. It was just a whisper, caught on the edge of a cough. He leaned against a parked car and heaved, only brought up water and some pink, filmy residue. Their lunch had been stale and a little spoiled over, so nausea was understandable – but all the same, everyone stepped away from him, looking amongst each other nervously. "Sorry," Keith kept saying to the ground. "Sorry, sorry. Keep movin'."

"We can't stop," Coach said. "Come on, boy. Get your feet under you. Can't you hear the chopper? Only a quarter mile. You can walk it, boy. Come on."

"Tryin'. I'm tryin'." He glanced up, breathing through his mouth, and then, catching the wide, staring eyes, he snarled. "Quit lookin' at me like that. I'm _immune_."

Ellis made a choked kind of noise. He sounded like he might be sick, too. "Oh, Keith…"

"Don't look at me like that," Keith repeated, his jaw grinding. "Quit, darlin', don't you know it's just me?"

"Keith, Keith, my Keith… You been through worse than this. Luckiest sonofabitch I know." The tears ran down Ellis's cheeks unchecked. They left clean streaks down his dirty face.

Keith nodded, made a low, rasping sound like a cough, like a growl. "I know, I know… I'm immune…"

"Don't make it all worth nothin'. Do you hear? You got to git on movin'."

"I'm movin'! I'm movin'. Please, God, I'm immune." Keith started walking, leaning a little off-kilter. They all wished, prayed in that desperate way people do when it's too late, that he was right – that it was just the fever, the dehydration and the hunger causing him to drag his feet like that. "Christ, I'm cold… I'm cold all over."

The pilot. Nick's brain screamed. He swallowed back the words, if only for Ellis, whose face was pallid with nerves.

"He's not going to last," Nick said softly. About two miles to their left, there was an explosion that made the ground swell and then deflate. But the end was in sight, the chopper, the last beacon of salvation. It was so close, and yet too far, too far away.

"Don't you say that," Ellis growled at him. "He's fine. He's immune. Can't you hear him talkin'?"

The sound of the air around them, the smell of blood.

"Cold," Keith whispered. "I'm cold, I'm cold."

Nick cocked his gun. He didn't realize he was doing it until he felt the telltale click. The ground beneath him lurched and swayed, and suddenly he was back in that helicopter, knowing what would come, knowing what he had to do, everyone around him screaming as the helicopter dipped towards the earth…

"Don't you dare," Rochelle said to him. Her hands and her voice shook. "Don't you dare."

Keith staggered to the left, righted himself. "Got to keep on movin'." He barked, a guttural noise, inhuman. Blood and vomit spilled from his mouth onto the pavement, and he lurched forward, moaning. "God, God, my head…"

The air tasted bitter, like gunpowder, like the thin, uncertain veil of morality. Nick felt the cold metal of the gun in his hand, the pressure of the trigger on his finger.

What were his reasons?

"Don't you do it!" Ellis screamed at him, and Keith turned around at the sound of his voice, saw the twin mouths at the end of the barrel. His jaw dropped open, blood swelled between his teeth. His eyes went wide, fixed on Nick's face, and they were blue, so blue.

And then they filled with fire.

It was all too late.

- **the end**


End file.
